This invention relates to the field of Internet communications, and in particular to a method and system that facilitates the sending of video clips via e-mail.
The increased availability of affordable computer systems, portable video devices, and the like, have provided for ubiquitous presentations of video content material in a variety of contexts. As such, marketing professionals have come to recognize that still images now lack the allure they might once have had, compared to the allure of a video clip. Static billboards and displays are continually being replaced by video display devices; airport terminal passageways, for example, are typically lined with one video screen after another, each displaying a video intended to attract the attention of the passers-by. In like manner, the number of commercial web-sites having windows presenting video advertisements is also increasing.
The use of video in e-mail marketing, however, is significantly lagging behind the use of video in other marketing arenas. The cause of this lag is multi-faceted, due primarily to the secondary effects of the current technology constraints and security issues associated with e-mail.
A common method for transmitting video content via e-mail is to attach the video file to an e-mail message. Among friends and colleagues, this is a fairly effective technique, because the recipient of the e-mail is likely to have an interest in viewing the attached file, and will perform the necessary actions to launch a viewer that renders the content of the file. Among advertisers and potential customers, such an interest would be rare, and most of the recipients of an advertisement video are not likely to purposely initiate a playback of the advertisement.
An alternative to attachment is to embed the video in the form of an executable program, such as Flash code, in the e-mail message. However, due to the potential for introducing malicious programs, most e-mail applications do not support the automatic execution of an embedded program, and particularly the execution of files that may contain embedded scripts. This problem may be overcome in the future by creating a video format and application that precludes the embedding of malicious software, but this solution requires the establishment of an agreed upon standard, as well as a modification to each e-mail application to support such a standard.
Another alternative is to provide an embedded image in the e-mail message, with a hyper-link to the video, so that when the user activates the hyper-link, e.g. by clicking on the image, a browser program displays the video. Although the presentation of the static image associated with the video may be more attractive than the e-mail application indicating that a video file is attached to the message, and does not consume the bandwidth for transmitting the video until the user activates the link, it still requires the user to initiate the rendering, which severely limits its effectiveness for video advertisement, as discussed above.
It would be advantageous to enable automated rendering of video clips when a user views an e-mail. It would also be advantageous to enable this automation without modifying existing e-mail applications. It would also be advantageous to provide an efficient process for embedding video clips in an e-mail. It would also be advantageous to optimize the bandwidth used to effect the rendering of the video clips. It would also be advantageous to optimize the video format for the device that renders the video clips.
These advantages, and others, can be realized by a method and system that converts a video stream into an animated image object, such as a GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) object, and embeds a reference to the animated image as an image element/tag in a conventional HTML-encoded e-mail message. When the receiving e-mail application processes the HTML encoding, the processing of the HTML image element (<img . . . >) causes the referenced animated image object to be downloaded and displayed, thereby automatically presenting a recreation of the video stream. To facilitate efficient transmission to the receiving device, the size of the animated image object is preferably optimized before transmission, the optimization including general optimization techniques, as well as optimizations based on the particular device receiving the animated image object.
As noted above, conventional e-mail applications do not support rendering of a video clip within an e-mail message. However, the applicants have recognized that virtually all e-mail applications support the rendering of image elements in an HTML-encoding of a received e-mail, and, included within the standard definition of an HTML image element are animated image objects, including GIF, APNG (Animated PNG), MNG (Multiple-image Network Graphics), and other objects.
Although utilities are available for using conventional video streams (e.g. avi, mpg, wmv, and so on) to create animated image objects, these utilities do not necessarily facilitate the creation of a custom-designed animated image that is suitable for inclusion in an e-mail marketing message. That is, a creator of a marketing brochure will be able to define the size of the image, the placement of the image within the advertisement, and so on, but may not be fluent in the techniques needed to be employed to convert a video image into an animated image object that will be embedded into the e-mail advertisement at the appropriate size and placement.
Even if the creator of an e-mail advertisement is fluent in the techniques necessary to create an appropriate animated image, a broadcast of the advertisement to a broad audience is likely to result in the advertisement being delivered to a variety of different devices, with differing display capabilities. Sending the same animated image object to each of the variety of devices can be very inefficient, and could lead to recipients automatically discarding/refusing messages from the advertiser. Sending an 800×600 pixel image to an ipod with a resolution of 320×240 pixels consumes over six times the bandwidth required to render the image. Similarly, sending a 320×240 image to a 1280×1024 display will produce a very ‘blocky’ image that would likely adversely affect the recipients' reaction to the advertisement. In like manner, sending a high resolution image via a broadband link may be feasible, but sending that same image via a low-speed modem link would be impractical. In a preferred embodiment of this invention, a variety of versions of the animated image corresponding to the video stream are created, each optimized for a particular set of receiver characteristics.
In addition to being able provide a variety of versions of the animated image representation of the video stream, the use of a server system for delivering the animated images in response to each recipient's opening of the message provides a means for determining how many copies of the animated image have actually been sent to the addressees of the e-mail message.
Throughout the drawings, the same reference numerals indicate similar or corresponding features or functions. The drawings are included for illustrative purposes and are not intended to limit the scope of the invention.